Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Light is like a wedding ring right now. Gold and harmony, and Henry Purcell ("Let him Oh! with his air of angels then lift me"). My brother was in the city—class at university—and we went for a walk around the block, coffee cups in hand. T-shirt weather, don't you know? Trees standing about like brassy backlit giants, black arms shining in the bright light. People talk about seizing the day, but I'm no dead poet, and I say the day should be enjoyed like simple or complicated music or a favourite friend—just sit back, and enjoy the harpsichord-time of it all, the sweetly dense and intricate beauty of a moment. Am I wrong? I woke up this morning with sunlight on my face and the branches of the lilac tapping against my window. Made my girlfriend breakfast and then went back to bed. How can I describe perfection? Today is a strong unicorn, white-bearded Charlemagne, chariots of angels.

Btw, decent prize to anyone who knows why that horse on the left (my little four-inch bitty horse) is called Veillantif. Clues are in this post.

BLOGSPOT ATE THE REST OF MY POST AND I HATE YOU BLOGSPOT BUT I WILL STILL CONTINUE TO USE YOU! MORE POSTING THURSDAY MIDMORNING! YES! ABOUT ANDREW WK!

Andrew WK + "One Brother" Annoyed is what I am, though not at this song, never at this man, may pure-begotten care-bears bless him from their fragrant and magic-laden palaces. I ordered Close Calls With Brick Walls around two months ago and it never showed up—though, to be fair, that remains the only time I've lost money on the mail. Other albums, though, have ALSO failed to make their way to my door or my new address, and that is very frustrating, and makes me think nasty, black-haired thoughts. But the music, right? The music is what is important. Can this song be described with words? Oh, of course not, there is no making words mean music, or, if there was, we would all skip the song and merely read the words. Whatever. My words about this song will be a kind of story, a sort of scene, and, that, hopefully, will show at least a little to you of what this song shows a lot of to me. Why not?

So this song is you running in a tall-grass field beside a dull-roar highway, making the airplane with your arms as you run. The swish swish of the speeding traffic makes you run faster and faster, and, turning your head, you can see through the windows of the spinning minivans, hard-topped SUVs—blank faces blabbing into cellphones, dull children evaporating into DVD players. You and I are glad we are not part of that ghostly host, and we continue to run under a grey sky and beside that droning highway. Because Andrew WK is not the same Andrew WK as that eccentric man who wore white jeans and danced hoarsely in front of a piano, no. This is an older Andrew, tired of fetishizing the rock'n'roll lifestyle—or, at least, there is a part of Andrew which is tired of a part of rock'n'roll. Oh, he still parties hard, he still rocks, and so does this song, rocking harder than a schooner driving toward the Eddystone lighthouse. A strong vocal beginning, and so very few seconds in, the ship crashes through the chords into a full-blown anthem. And that bridge is amazing, la musique de rock performed by a crazy prince of casio. This is an anthem about trusting old friends, familiar waters, about committing to the craft, and not getting lost in the emptiness which merely defining yourself as a star will bring you. But not you and I! You and I, sailing beside that highway, that outwardly-emotionless traffic, we need that emptiness we see in others in order to validate ourselves, in order to draw attention to ourselves, in order to confirm our intention of being gods, all-valuable, all-knowing. Calling these people empty means we are full. Running beside them, craving and scorning their attention, we are lurching towards very dangerous rock. But Andrew asks us why we need to feed off of these others, and tells us we need to party hard with the people we started out with, the people who are a part of us, our originals. The old Andrew is still here, the music remains faithful to the original, but the man is so much richer than that old party-hard chord—the music so much deeper, wider, stronger than before. Those old songs were childrens' furniture, charming and bright. This song is a stone table, a bright lighthouse, a perfect roaring highway of a song. Love it.

This mp3, you should know, was found on I Rock Cleveland. Kudos to Bill and his Lakewood apartment.

Thursday, October 12, 2006

If, for reasons parlous or unknown, you've been wondering whether your favourite black-and-white page (the one with the often-nonsense headlines and randomly posted pix) would EVER be updated or not, wonder no longer. Well, but it has been forever, I know. My visitor count is way down, even among the new faces, other minds. I can only assume that most people expect poison from standing water. My time away from this blog, I would like to assure you, has not been wastefully—er—wasted. True, there was that afternoon—all right, that week of afternoons—spent huffing Febreze in the garage. Did you know if you stare into incandescent lights and then turn your head quickly to stare at the night sky, you'll see a misty mauve fog of swirling stars? This quasi-eerie illusion is called The Purple Sea, which sounds like a Prince song and almost is. Casiotone FTPA will probably come out with a newer, synthier version of that sky for next year.

Seriously, I'm going to put the Febreze away, now. Just one more—ah. Yes.

Mitch Ryder + "When U Were Mine" Because I was talking about Prince. Because I mentioned Casiotone. Because this is like the end credits to all those movies where they freeze the final shot, and the hero has his fist just about breaking out of the frame (that's how high, hard, he is jumping), or the pretty girl just landed or just dumped the right guy, the wrong guy. Airplanes cutting across the sky, contrails in the autumn. A dusty DynoVoice singing sincerely, guitar swinging across the hips. That kind of song. I'm not saying I think it's good (I do), I'm not saying there aren't better covers out there (there are), I'm just saying this one is right for the moment. You should probably drive back to a little home where the lamps are cozy, the television is friendly, there're old magazines beside the couch and a plate of buttered rice or something better on the back of the oven. If you're lucky, like me, you'll even have a dark-haired girlfriend to kiss. This is THAT kind of song.